Pumped Up

Some of you may recall my frenetic post from several months ago when, after hours upon hours of Charlotte crying and a desperate phone call to her pediatrician, I began supplementing her feedings with formula. I cried as I gave her that first bottle of formula, devastated that I had “failed” to produce enough milk to fill her up. Every parenting book and hospital handout told me that what I was doing was WRONG. But gee, Charlotte sure liked having a full tummy. For the record, before I climb up on my soapbox here, I’m not anti-breastfeeding. I’m against the puffed up importance that the medical establishment, smug moms, and La Leche Leauge place on it. (I also, for the record, fully support public breastfeeding. I’m talking whip-out-a-boob, don’t-even-bother-to-cover-up breastfeeding. While I myself cower in the car in the parking lot or, at best, hide in Nordstrom’s women’s lounge to do the deed, I admire the women who can do it oh so publicly. People who are uncomfortable need only look away. These women should not be vilified as exhibitionists. A baby, especially a newborn, has to eat constantly, and women are under immense pressure to breastfeed breastfeed breastfeed. Cut them some frickin’ slack.) Anyhoo, back to my own breastfeeding failure. Every book in the world will tell you that it is a myth that you can’t produce enough milk. More effort, more sacrifice, more nonstop non-nutritive sucking will eventually kick things into gear. Oh really? How many days was I supposed to let my 3-week-old baby go hungry? And for what? The blessed honor of saying that I exclusively breastfeed? No way. So, for the past several months, Charlotte has been about 2/3 to 3/4 breastfed and 1/3 to 1/4 formula fed. (During the craziness of the move this ratio dwindled to about half and half, but I got it moved up again after things calmed down.) I went back to work April 21, and I’ve maintained this ratio. Barely. For the current schedule, I nurse Charlotte in the morning and then she has two or three bottles at school. One of these is a good 6 or 7 ounces of expressed breast milk, which requires me to pump at work. Then I nurse her for her final feeding before putting her to bed. I cannot begin to tell you the amount of planning, hassle, and clean-up pumping at work requires. All the components need to be packed up the night before; ice packs added the next morning to keep the to-be-pumped milk at a safe temperature; everything set up, put together, and plugged in at work followed by the actual pumping in my not-so-ideal office; milk then needs to be discretely put in the office fridge; everything must get put away; finally, I must remember to fetch the milk from the fridge before leaving for the day. At home, all the equipment needs to be washed and sterilized, expressed milk transferred into the bottles that help Charlotte spit up less, the other breast pump bottles cleaned and sanitized, and the new bottle labeled with the words “BREASTMILK” with a date for Charlotte to take to school the next day. All of this is for ONE FEEDING to take place midday while Charlotte is at school. So, after much internal debate, I’ve decided to kill off the midday pumping and feeding. I had pretty much reconciled myself to the decision to stop the midday pumping in a few days when I very stupidly did some blog stalking and found a charming post that someone had posted on the importance of breastfeeding and how the church has “dropped the ball” by (1) not properly shunning career-minded women (I think the church does a perfectly adequate job of this, but whatever) and (2) pressuring them to cover up when feeding at Bible study groups. (I do, however, agree with the blogger that pressuring women to hide the fact that they breastfeed for modesty's sake is wrong.) The rationale was that God made breast milk to be perfect, so opting for something man-made (i.e., formula) is inherently sinful. So working mothers = death of breastfeeding. Ah, there it is. There’s that fun nugget of judgment we always return to. Really? Apparently lording one’s ability or freedom to exclusively breastfeed over the working moms secures your place in heaven. What a sweet notion. Here in the real world, every mother I have spoken to—even those who exclusively breastfeed—seems to agree that every baby is different, every mother is different, every situation is different, and that the vast majority of mommies are just doing the best they can within all those variables. “Mommy wars” just make the already-difficult task of motherhood that much harder. Although I’m coming to learn that breastfeeding is the latest type of ammunition loaded into the God-says-stay-at-home bazooka, I’m so not going to play that game. Frankly, I don’t have the time. I assure you that, as a first-time mom, I already second-guess every single decision I make. But you know what? At some point, a decision has to be made. Not pumping at work midday will allow me to get more work done so I can spend more time with Charlotte and will make me a happier, better mom because I now have one less time-consuming thing to do.